Decimated: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 3) Read online

  Slowly, together, they eased Devin down onto it. When Logan took his hands away from the blanket, they were red with blood and shaking.

  “What happened?” he found himself asking, as if it really mattered.

  What was done was done. The man he’d looked up to, the man who’d helped build Ironlock up to the safe haven it was, was now dying.

  Regina swiped her face with the back of her sleeve. She wore a Cleveland Indians sweater, dark blue, with Chief Wahoo grinning big above the words ‘Roll Tribe.’ Tears smeared across her cheeks, making them shine in the low flicker of flames from somewhere behind them.

  “I was asleep. Devin wasn’t, I guess. Seems like he never gets a full night’s worth. Sometimes he reads, other times he goes into the communication room and listens to the static coming from D.C. and all over the world. Tortures himself like that. I call him a masochist, and he asks me what that means. I tell him to read something besides a war book.” Regina smiled, but her eyes remained haunted. “He was out there on the walkway when the earthquake or whatever it was struck. Part of the ceiling fell in. He got…he got hit by a chunk of stone. It should’ve killed him outright.” That haunted-eyed smile again. “My Dev is stubborn, I guess.”

  From the mattress, Devin began coughing. He turned his head to the side and hacked up blood. The extent of his injuries couldn’t be seen through the blanket, but Logan figured if the man was unconscious and coughing up blood, it certainly couldn’t be good.

  Regina’s shaking hand gently stroked Devin’s cheek, wiping the red spittle away. His eyes lolled at her touch, flashing a bloodshot white. Shuddering, Regina began to cry again.

  “We gotta get him out of here,” Logan said.

  In his mind, he was mapping out his escape route. It wouldn’t be easy, considering the walkway now possessed a huge gap, and the stairs were all messed up, but where there was a will, there was a way.

  Looking up, Regina smiled. “He’s not going anywhere. He’s dying, Logan.”

  Logan shook his head. “No. No. We can fix him. Get him to the infirmary. Jane’s just down the corridor, she’ll get him the help he needs if Grace isn’t…here. C’mon, let’s go before the roof caves in.”

  A cold hand fell upon him, sending chills up his spine. Regina spoke like a woman completely under control, though how she could be under control at a time like this, he didn’t know. He felt like he was one tug away from unraveling completely.

  “Logan, he’s dying, honey. Best we just let him go in peace.”

  A flare of anger came over him. How could she just sit here while her husband died? If he was in her position, and Jane was the hurt one, he would walk through flames to make her well again. He just didn’t understand—

  That was when Regina shifted the blanket covering her husband. Logan didn’t think she did this purposefully to prove a point, nothing like that, but it proved a point regardless.

  Devin’s chest had caved in nearly completely. His upper torso looked like a lump of clay or, a more apt description, roadkill. Ribs jutted out through his shirt, jagged and sharp. He wasn’t bleeding anymore; most of the blood around the wound had congealed. It was now that Logan heard the struggle of Devin’s breathing. Each gulp of air he took rasped and grated in his lungs, which were collapsed, or very close to collapsing.

  Regina saw Logan staring at Devin’s chest, and she put her hand on his once more.

  Tears rolled down Logan’s face. He shuddered with a stifled sob.

  Giving his hand a squeeze, Regina said, “There, there, honey. He’s going to a better place. The light will take him, and there he will wait until it’s my time to go. But it’s not my time, and it’s not yours either, Logan. It’s Dev’s time. There’s nothing we can do about that except make him comfortable.”

  And suddenly Logan wanted to scream at the top of his lungs about how unfair it all was, how wrong life had become in the last six months. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

  Somewhere far away, or so it seemed, an explosion shook the prison. Logan put it to the back of his mind.

  Devin opened his eyes. The right one drifted slightly outward, as if it was disconnected from the optical nerve, but the left eye focused on Logan, it seemed. Then his lips began moving. Slowly at first, then at what seemed like a normal clip. No words came out of his mouth—at least none that Logan could hear. He leaned closer. A harsh whispering came now, sounding beyond pained.

  “It was…was fun,” Devin said. “I-I’m o-o-okay.”

  But he wasn’t okay. He was the furthest thing from okay. He was dying, and Logan was watching it happen. The fact that he could do nothing about it besides sit there and watch the life slowly leak out of his friend’s eyes hurt him more than anything ever had before.

  Regina blinked and tears fell. They hit the blanket at the same time, their wetness lost in the redness. She leaned forward and kissed Devin on the corner of the mouth, not caring about the spittle or the blood there.

  “I-I-I love y-you, Gina.”

  Devin tried raising a hand, but all he managed was a slight twitch. Regina was right: it was too late. There was nothing they could do for him, short of taking him to a hospital, and as far as Logan knew, those didn’t exist anymore.

  Devin turned back and faced Logan. Logan held the man’s hand, which was cold and trembling. Devin’s lips parted as he tried to speak, but the words turned into a coughing fit, and his face screwed up in pain and anguish. Flecks of blood escaped his mouth.

  “Don’t speak, honey. Don’t speak. Just c-close your eyes,” Regina cooed, a hand now on Devin’s blanched and sweaty forehead.

  The surreal feeling that Logan should’ve been so used to came over him again. He knew Devin Johnson as a tough as nails son-of-a-gun who was willing to put his body on the line for the safety of others. He had once watched the man fight a monster twice his size in hand-to-hand combat and win. He was their leader, the patriarch of their family. Ironlock needed him.

  And now, seeing him reduced to…this. It just wasn’t real, couldn’t be real.

  Devin slowly turned his head from side to side, signaling ‘No.’ He stared into Logan’s face with his one good eye. “Here…”

  Logan leaned closer. Only later would he admit to himself that he could already smell the scent of death clinging to Devin. Right then, though, he ignored it, still trying to tell himself that this wasn’t real; it was all a nightmare, and he’d wake up any minute, back in bed with Jane next to him.

  “Y-You take c-care of h-h-h…”

  He didn’t finish. His eyes closed tightly as he wrestled with another bout of pain. Maybe this was it; maybe this was the Hand of God tightening His grip around Devin, preparing to pull the tough son-of-a-gun up to Heaven.

  Then: “Themmmmm…”

  Logan nodded furiously, tears burning his eyes. “I will,” he said. “I will.”

  Devin Johnson spoke no more, and in less than two minutes, he stopped breathing for good.

  Logan and Regina sat with Devin’s body lying between them, looking at his face. Despite everything, Logan admitted that the man seemed peaceful. He hoped it didn’t hurt at the end, but if it did, the one guy on Earth who could’ve withstood the pain was Devin Johnson.

  Regina covered him with a sheet.

  “We’ll come back for him,” Logan said. “We won’t leave him here.”

  “It’s okay. Devin—the Devin I knew and loved—is gone. Under that sheet is just the shell that protected his precious soul.”

  Regina reached out and grabbed Logan’s hand. He led her from the cell. For some reason, perhaps out of habit, she closed the bars behind her and lowered the privacy curtain.

  I wish I could be as strong as her, Logan thought.

  Devin’s last words floated up into his mind. ‘You take care of them.’

  He would. He would take care of all of those who survived. Though he didn’t fully realize it yet, Devin Johnson had passed the torch to him. Logan was now their leader.


  Had he understood this, he would’ve been more frightened, but he would’ve gritted his teeth and done it.

  They climbed over to the opposite side of the walkway. Jane was just stepping out of cell nine, cradling in her arms something wrapped in a sheet.

  Lila Dorner. She had been just eight years old, her life much too short.

  Jane cried, but managed to keep her head held high. Not speaking, Logan took the wrapped bundle in his arms.

  The girl couldn’t have weighed more than fifty pounds.

  Regina came around Logan’s side and put an arm around Jane. The three of them went down the stairs and into the courtyard outside.

  3

  Brad

  In the deep dark of his slumber, Bradley Long heard an explosion. This night was a dreamless night…for once. Though when he woke, he might agree that any nightmare would’ve proven better than reality.

  His eyes shot open. For the moment, he didn’t know where he was. He first thought he was back in Pittsburgh, in the apartment just off campus; then he thought he was in Woodhaven, visiting his childhood home, where his father had killed himself.

  For the smallest of moments, his mother was still alive to him. She had not yet turned into a mutated abomination; had not grown so large that her girth destroyed the house on Chestnut.

  In this split second of confusion, someone near him screamed. This was a slap to the face, a bucket of ice cold water dumped over his head. The ground shook with a force great enough to knock the watchtowers down out back—though Brad wouldn’t know this until all had calmed down.

  A month before, he’d had a nightmare. In this nightmare, he saw a finger pressing a button, a great red button, the kind you weren’t supposed to press but couldn’t resist. The finger was oddly skeletal and pale. Just above it, he remembered seeing the black cloth of what might have been a robe. After the button was pressed, the world burned with a great fire.

  But blowing up the world, he was sure, was not as easy as pressing a button. No way. There were codes to be punched in, keys to be turned. But the dream, he knew, was a metaphor, and he also knew, at least in some part of his mind, that it was a premonition.

  Though he wouldn’t admit this to himself.

  He’d spent the month after what happened in Cleveland with his nose in the Bible, and like Regina had said, it had done him good. His nightmares had been few.

  The scream came again and was answered by a confused shout. Brad smelled smoke. He shot up out of bed and threw back his curtain in the doorway. People were running in the corridor.

  Cell Block D was the least populated of all the blocks. Just four people, including himself. Brad knew the others well enough: Grease, and the newcomers Tyler and May. Joe used to sleep in D, too, but he was gone now, smashed and ripped apart by a monster after they’d rummaged through a pharmacy in some unnamed town. This was the block for what Brad thought of as ‘the loners’. Most of the people in Ironlock liked the comfort of being close to one another. Brad didn’t mind that; he just felt more comfortable on his own. Same probably went for Grease.

  Grease was in the cell two down from Brad’s. At the end of the corridor, Tyler and May shared a cell.

  Rumor around the compound was that they were together. A couple of people didn’t like that: an interracial couple…a black man and a white woman half his age…but Brad figured, who gave a flying crap? It was 2019. Mind your own business.

  The truth of the matter was, and Brad knew this for certain, May and Tyler were just friends. They had made it here together, had spent most of the apocalypse together, had seen terrible things together. That kind of bond was stronger than any other; it was the same kind of bond he shared with Logan and Jane Harper, who’d been there when he was at his lowest, who’d helped pick him up and piece him back together again.

  Of course, the loss of his mother still stung—it always would—but each day got better. Even with the monsters outside.

  When he looked into the corridor, the confused shouts still echoing from the other cell blocks, he saw Tyler doing the same. Bright light came in through the outside, so bright he had to cover his eyes.

  “What’s happening?” Tyler asked.

  May poked her head out, too, now, her eyes heavy with sleep. Her arm was in a sling, still splinted. Grace said it would probably never heal properly, considering the extent of the break and their lack of medical supplies.

  When May had told Brad this a few weeks ago, she’d said, “I don’t care if it doesn’t heal right. I’m just glad to be alive.” Then she had glared at Tyler with a ghost of a smile on her face. “Never let him drive you around.” Her laugh let Tyler know she was only kidding.

  She looked very pretty when she laughed. It was a stark difference from how she looked now: scared, pale, brow wrinkled in confusion.

  “I don’t know,” Brad answered Tyler.

  The ground rumbled again, so hard that the alarm clock on the desk behind Brad fell over and shattered, and he almost lost his balance. Tyler put a protective arm over May’s shoulder.

  Brad held onto the bars of his cell door. When the quake passed, he walked down the corridor and peered into Grease’s cell. What he saw brought a smile to his face, despite the confusion and the underlying feeling in the pit of his stomach that this, whatever ‘this’ was, was somehow his fault: Grease was snoring away, dead to the world. Even when another jolt rocked the prison, and one of his crutches fell over from its leaning position and bonked him a good one on the head, Grease barely stirred.

  Tyler and May were looking in the cell, too. Brad turned to them and said, “Get him up, if you can. I’m gonna try and see what’s going on.”

  “Do you think it’s…it’s a monster? One of the big ones?” May asked in a small, frightened voice.

  Brad shook his head with near one hundred percent certainty.

  It’s worse than that. Way worse.

  He jogged to the end of the corridor, to the stairs. They were cracking, but one of the bigger windows here showed a better view of the outside world. He had expected fire, and lots of it, but that wasn’t what he saw. In truth, he didn’t see much. It was so bright out, he might as well have been looking directly into the sun, but that fireball had barely showed itself at all in the past months.

  Shielding his eyes and still smelling smoke, sharper now, he plunged down the stairs in the direction of the screams.

  The explosion in Cell Block C happened a few seconds before Brad reached the corridor. Had he not stopped and looked at the dying outside world, he himself would’ve been dead.

  Tyler Stapleton found Brad lying unconscious about twenty feet from a spreading flame. He picked the kid up and carried him outside while May helped Grease navigate through the rubble and the bodies on his crutches. Tyler kept telling them not to look, but that didn’t do them much good. He was looking, so they would too.

  Here was an arm, the bone jutting from the end, the fingers curled and charred. Here was a body on its stomach, the clothes melted into the flesh, the hair burned, and the scalp smoking. A heavy scent of flaming flesh filled Tyler’s nostrils, but if he breathed through his mouth, he could taste it on his tongue, and that was worse. So much worse.

  He was breathing hard, too. Brad wasn’t dead, but he felt like dead weight regardless, and Tyler wasn’t over his injuries completely. His ribs flared with pain; his shoulder, which had been out of its socket for nearly three days after the crash before he said anything about it, ached. To top it all off, he was not in the best of shape.

  Where’s that big guy when you need him, right? he wondered, thinking about Logan.

  A minute later, they were free. Tyler set Brad down on the cracked pavement, then he fell to his knees and breathed air so hot that his lungs felt as if they were aflame. Other survivors streamed out, but his eyes burned so badly with the smoke that their faces didn’t register. There was only a handful of them, and that was not good. Not good at all.

  Out front, they watched the pris
on—their home—as it was slowly destroyed, the stone sinking, the towers and embattlements falling.

  4

  Losses

  Of the eighteen people living in Ironlock, only seven had survived. Most of the others had been crushed by the overhead stones and the falling walls. More than a few were trapped in the blazing fires.

  Andrew Overton and Stephanie Ferguson—two people who’d arrived at Ironlock at different times, but had found love and comfort in each other’s company—died in one another’s arms in Cell Block B. A cascade of bricks had trapped them in their cell, while the bulk of the block burned, after the kerosene lamps on the walls caught first the privacy curtains and then the wooden desk and beds and clothing. Their cause of death would’ve been smoke inhalation, had they been looked at by a professional. Compared to what happened to the half a dozen inhabitants of Cell Block C, where the fires were the worst in the prison, thanks to the store of fuel in a nearby supply closet, death by smoke inhalation was getting off lucky.

  Those in C had been rocked by an explosion. When the smoke cleared enough a few hours later, Logan and Brad picked through the remains of the block. They found six corpses so blackened and charred that they were unrecognizable. But Logan knew who they were; these were people he’d shared meals with, people he’d laughed and conversed with. In cell three, two crisped corpses clutched each other. One was large, and one was small, about the size of a four-year-old child. This was Michelle and Savanna, mother and daughter. Gone.

  Logan couldn’t imagine what they’d went through. He knelt before their bodies, put a hand on Michelle’s shoulder. The heat within the charred bones burned his fingers, but he didn’t pull them away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”